We have all seen how an appropriate and well-timed joke can sometimes influence even grim tyrants… The most violent tyrants put up with their clowns and fools, though these often made them the butt of open insults.

 

—Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, 1509.

 

 

A bottle of pop, a big banana

We’re from southern Louisiana

That’s a lie, that’s a fib

We’re from Colorado

 

—From: C.H. Ainsworth, “Jump Rope Verses around the United States,” Western Folklore 20, 1961, 121. Cited in Susan Stewart, Nonsense.